


Angels and Dragonflies

by anneapocalypse



Category: The 13 Clocks - James Thurber
Genre: Chocolate Box Exchange 2020, Gen, Magic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22437925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: Time lay frozen in the gloomy castle on the lonely hill, but Saralinda was old enough to remember a time when the clocks did go.
Relationships: Hark & Saralinda (The 13 Clocks), The Golux & Saralinda (The 13 Clocks)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Angels and Dragonflies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phraseme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phraseme/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box, phraseme! I was so delighted to match on this canon and to see that someone loves Thurber's book as much as I do. I hope you enjoy this little story.
> 
> Many thanks to Chantress for making a podfic of this story! A link can be found at the bottom and I hope my readers will give it a listen. Thank you so much. 🌹

Seven years ago, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, there were thirteen clocks that ticked and tocked and chimed the hours and echoed off the stone walls beneath high and dusty ceilings. There in the castle lived a Princess named Saralinda, and her uncle the Duke.

So goes the tale of how time froze one snowy night in Coffin Castle. Or so I think it goes. I think it is true, but then again, I might have made it up. I make things up, you know.

Saralinda was thirteen years old and lonesome in the lonely castle, but made the most of it walking in the gardens and cultivating flowers. She had some luck with freesias, and camellias, but it was the rose-bushes that truly enticed her. It had been years since they blossomed, and the bushes stood bare and brambly, but Saralinda all the same imagined jewel-red blooms amid green leaves. Something she had seen in a dream, perhaps, or in the pages of books.

The Duke despised books, and tales, and poetry, believing them to be frippish and frivolous things for lighting a light in people's hearts, and if there was one thing the Duke detested it was a light in people's hearts, unless it was his own. But Saralinda was permitted to have her own chamber, into which her uncle never entered, and she had been able to acquire some volumes by passing pennies to pages, or bread to vagabonds, in exchange for books, or even bribing the Duke's own spies to bring them to her.

"This one," Hark said, "you may find to your fancy. It tells the tale of a Princess trapped in a tower."

Saralinda was not trapped in a tower. There was a tower in the castle, wherein the Duke was known to imprison vagrants and vagabonds who came to the castle seeking asylum in their ignorance. If the Duke did not run them through with his sword for trampling the flowerbeds or looking askance at his geese, or having names that began with X, he might have them thrown in the tower for some similar offense. Saralinda had seen them sometimes, in rags and tags and chains, trudging up the stairs surrounding by guards.

All through the day the castle clocks ticked and tocked, so that there was no chamber or corridor of the castle that was quiet. The long, tall clocks that stood upon the floor bonged in long and lingering tones the hours as they went, and the wall-hanging clocks with their long chains and pendulums chimed the quarter-hours, so anywhere you went you felt the footsteps of time clanging and clattering by, and it was impossible not to know what time it was. Saralinda kept no clock in her chamber, but knew the time from the ticking and the bonging that carried through the oak door.

She was required to take her meals with her uncle at the black oak table in the black oak room, lit by flaming torches on the walls. She was not permitted to be even one minute late or her uncle would shout and rant and rap his sword-cane on the stone walls by the stair. So when the clocks chimed a quarter to six, she would lay down whatever book she was reading, and dress for dinner, and make her way down the long marble stair.

Her uncle would be seated at the head of the table, waiting for her. He wore black velvet gloves adorned with jewels, even for meals, and his face was cold and craggy and pale as the moon, but when Saralinda entered the room, he would hold up his hands as if to warm them, and it would seem that some color made its way into his sunken cheeks, though it might have been a trick of the torches' red flicker.

Sometimes Saralinda would try to make conversation, saying, "The camellias are coming in nicely, Uncle."

From the opposite end of the long table, her uncle leered through his monocle. She could not tell if he was pleased.

She tried again. "The rose-bushes require more sun."

"Fah." Her uncle seemed to sneer, though in the dim flickering light it was hard to tell. "Try freesias."

"I have," said Saralinda. "They're doing well."

Down the length of the table, she could feel the cold monocled eye fixed upon her. "Then be content with what you have, my girl."

Saralinda ate her supper, and said no more.

In the hours between, when not in her chamber reading books, Saralinda spent her hours about the castle grounds, tending to her flowerbeds and coaxing things to bloom. The stone walls of Coffin Castle were high and dreary gray, and broad black oak trees loomed over the grounds, and something seemed to block the sun no matter where you stood. From the stony ground, the young Princess had persuaded shaded blossoms of white and pale pink to grow, and give some color to the dreary walls. But more sun and warmth would be required to make the roses bloom.

"How goes the day?" said Hark, a servant of her uncle, come strolling across the lawn in his customary cloak and velvet mask. "And how, fair Princess, does your garden grow?"

"Fairly," said Saralinda. "But I long for roses."

"A full-sun breed," the masked man observed, and leant forward to pinch a bloomless branch. Cracking off a twig, he showed her the broken place, a thread of green running down the middle. "There's life at the quick. But you'll need more sun to bring it out than these gloomy grounds can offer."

"What shall I do then?" Saralinda said in dismay.

The cloaked man shrugged. "I say, stick to shade plants. You'll have more luck." He winked behind his velvet mask, and turned back toward the castle.

"You might turn to magic," said the little bearded man, "if you've any in your blood."

Saralinda jumped. "Who are you?"

"I am the Golux," said the little man. Though his beard was gray, he was scarcely taller than she was, save for his indescribable hat. "The only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device."

"I don't know what that means," said Saralinda.

"It means not half as much as it might. You were speaking of roses."

"You said 'magic,'" said Saralinda.

"Did I?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Just now."

"Oh, that's right. I forget things sometimes. My mother was a witch, but I'm sorry to say I have no magic to depend on."

"How did you find your way into this courtyard then?" the Princess asked. "The gates are locked and guarded."

"I suppose I must have made my way in," the Golux replied. "I said I inherited no magic to rely upon. It comes to me sometimes anyway."

"I don't have a mother," said Saralinda. "Only an uncle. And I'm sure _he_ doesn't have any magic."

"I see, I see. Well, that does complicate matters. Or perhaps it doesn't. If a magical mother may not, then a mother who isn't just might. That's logic, you see."

"I don't," said Saralinda.

But at once she heard the clocks chiming faintly from afar, telling her that her time about the grounds was nearly up. "I have to go—" Saralinda began, but turning to look at the little man, found no one there at all.

She took off for the castle, but halfway there heard the sound of her uncle shouting.

"Guards!" the Duke snarled. "Remove it! This fetid wretch, this feral creature. Away with it. Into the dungeon with it. Or," an evil grin gleamed across his face, "better yet, into the tower."

"Wait," cried Saralinda, "stop."

The creature in the camellias was a small boy, smaller than Saralinda, wide-eyed and curled with dread against the castle wall. His clothes were rags, his face smudged and freckled, and his hair a brazen red. Against the gray stone he stood out particularly.

The cold Duke turned his monocle upon his niece, his voice like frost on stone. "What did you say?"

"Let him go," Saralinda said, thinking of the tales of towers. "Let him go. He's only a child."

A cold cackle broke forth from her uncle, showing his teeth. "You would have me spare this young wastrel! Make of him a princeling, eh, a suitor for your young hand? Bah. The tower for him, and for _you,_ my Princess—more petals, and less prattle."

Her uncle spoke words she did not understand, but Saralinda drew herself up tall. "They're my flowers. I grew them."

The Duke's cold laughter rang against the castle walls. "Time ticks on, my Princess. Lords and vagrants may come, princes and paupers may preen for you and seek your hand, and all of them will break themselves against my sword and scorn." He brandished his blade, and gestured with its point. "You, dear Princess, belong to me. And do not forget it again."

The Princess fled up the stone stairs to the solitude of her chamber, while at the foot of the stair, Hark hummed, and adjusted his mask.

Time ticked on, and the hours and minutes rang out within the castle walls as the sun proceeded across the sky without. The summer waned, and petals dropped; the gardens grew bare, and cold fell upon the castle. And all the while Saralinda felt the footsteps of time at her heels, chasing her toward she knew not what, but it filled her with dread.

"I'm cold," the Duke said sulkily, over his soup. At the far end of the table, Saralinda ate her supper in silence. Sapphires gleamed on the Duke's velvet gloves. Hark rubbed his bare hands together.

It was cold. Frost had settle upon the castle grounds, and snowflakes were beginning to draft past the windows. Saralinda's radiance shone at the end of the long black table, but her warmth could not reach the Duke, who sulked and shivered in his velvet cloak. The feathers in his hat waved slightly in the air, as though caught in a light breeze.

Saralinda set down her spoon. "May I go to my room, please, Uncle?"

"You'll sit until I'm finished," the Duke sneered. "Stay."

Saralinda folded her hands, and fell silent.

The clocks were clanging seven when Hark moved up the stone stairs, making his rounds about the Castle before setting out for the evening, to lurk about the village and listen to talk in the taverns. When footsteps caught his ear, Hark diverted from his route, and followed the sound.

The steps were soft, Saralinda having traded her jeweled shoes for slippers that whispered on the stone floor, but Hark had trained himself to hear whispers.

"The Duke," said Hark, "would not be pleased to know I found you here, your Highness."

Saralinda stood for a moment, a blanket draped over one arm, a hunk of brown bread from the larder in her hands. "And will you tell him?"

"The tower," said Hark, "is guarded."

"The boy," said Saralinda, "will be cold, and hungry."

They regarded each other for a moment, the Princess and the spy.

"Something," said Hark, "might draw the guards from their post. Lurk in shadow and do not be seen."

"I will," Saralinda said. "Like you."

Lurking in shadow and stepping softly over the stone in the way he had learned many years ago, Hark made his way to the black oak room, now empty. The sun had all but set, and the dry stalks in the garden bed swayed in a chill wind. Hark hummed to himself, an old half-forgotten tune from a shore away, and cranked the double-arched pane of the window open. Frigid gusts assailed him, feebly muted by his mask. The snow was already sticking to the ground.

Hark departed the room, leaving the window.

Skirting the castle's perimeter, Hark hefted a stone or two and hucked them at the flowerbeds, one after the other. Black-clad, he blended into the night. Then another stone, sounding off the castle wall. Another went wide, and crashed through another window, still closed, with a pleasing shatter.

From within, he heard the Duke roar, "Guards!"

Saralinda woke with a start before dawn. Moonlight streamed in her window, and though her heart raced, she could see no danger in her chamber. She was alone, and her door was safely latched, and the embers still glowed faintly in the fireplace. She had made it to the tower and back the night before unseen. Hark did not know it, but she had done it many times before.

But something was now amiss.

Cautiously she climbed from her bed, slipping her feet into slippers to protect them from the cold stone floor, and crept toward the door. Her ears seemed to strain with listening. There was something—

No, there was _nothing._

No sound of ticking, tocking, chiming, gonging.

No sound of the clocks.

Saralinda stood a moment, taking in the silence, then went to her window, peering through the frosty glass across the castle grounds. A freshly fallen snow covered the ground, but some distance away, a spot of color caught her eye. A rose lay there in snow, brilliant red, as though it had bloomed in the night and then fallen.

Hark crept up the lonely hill in the chill hour before dawn to find the castle silent.

The Duke would shake the clocks, and kick them, and knock on them, and pull their pendulums, and hire many a passing tinker to do the same, but they would not go. The clocks froze in Coffin Castle that snowy night, and only Hark knew why, or at least suspected.

Magic, you know, is a funny thing. Some have it but can't use it, and others use it but haven't got it, and when it works it works in peculiar ways. Time slows for a Princess ticking toward her fate. The warmth of one kind hand makes a rose-bush bloom in winter. Mother used to say it was about Intent. She may have made that up.

Of this, however, I am almost certain: there are rules and rites and rituals older than roses and snow. A masked man came from Yarrow perhaps a dozen years ago. He could not save the Princess, for he did not fit the measure of a spell. But he might have left a window open.

One can never tell.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Angels and Dragonflies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24697774) by [Chantress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chantress/pseuds/Chantress)




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